Yael Swerdlow

Yael Swerdlow is a strategic communication consultant specializing in public diplomacy. Yael is co-founder of the Women’s Empowerment Foundation, based in Southern California. She is Co-Chair of the National Leadership Council of Games For Change, and on the Board of the Hadassah Brandeis Institute, and is the USC’s Center on Public Diplomacy’s official liaison to the Consular Corps in Southern California. Yael serves as a media literacy and advocacy educator for both the Museum of Tolerance’s Multicultural Leadership Project and the San Diego Anti-Defamation League’s Manhigim Institute. Formerly, Yael was the Director of Media Relations for the Consulate General of Israel in Los Angeles. As a Yael freelance photojournalist, she was a part of the Pulitzer Prize winning teams for the Los Angeles Riots in 1992 and the Northridge Earthquake of 1994. In summer of 1994, Yael went to Somalia, Southern Sudan, and Rwanda for International Medical Corps, to document the reestablishing of the medical infrastructure in those war-torn countries. Yael also writes fiction, including the cinematic script for Activision’s best selling video game, “True Crime: Streets of LA”.